Turning the World Upside Down – Mental Health Challenge is an open competition to celebrate projects, practices and ideas from low and middle income countries, which could be effectively applied to the major health challenges faced by high income countries.

Submit a case study to share your work and have the chance to pitch your idea to our high profile panel and win the Turning the World Upside Down – Mental Health Award. The goal of the challenge is to collect, promote and celebrate alternative approaches to mental health from low and middle income countries.

Turning the World Upside Down – Mental Health Award is a collaboration with the Centre for Global Mental Health, Institute for Healthcare Improvement, Maudsley International, Mind, and NYU’s Program in Global Mental Health
Why mental health?

Mental health conditions are the greatest contributor to years of life lost to disability worldwide. They worsen the course of most medical conditions and stand in the way of our key drivers for social improvement. As mental health seems to be finally taking its place on the global health agenda, attention is growing on the inability of mental health systems and policies to live up to this challenge. Services can be fragmented, policy siloed, access to care poor, preventive and population-level strategies underused, evidence-based interventions variably deployed, healthcare not culturally relevant, and investment limited.

Both high and low-income countries face these challenges. Countries with fewer resources, and without the baggage and vested interests found in high income countries, often cultivate their own unique climate for innovation and finding practical solutions.

By changing the flow of information we can turn the global mental health world upside down, driving new and needed change, and offering perspectives and solutions to these same challenges in high-income countries.

Join the movement

We want to celebrate your work and to do this, we need you. We are searching for projects, practices, and ideas from low and middle income countries with global relevance that we can learn from in high income countries and the rest of the world.

Do you want the opportunity to present your work to Lord Nigel Crisp, Peter Piot and a high profile panel in an event live streamed around the world? Do you want to be the winner of our Turning the World Upside Down Mental Health Award?

To enter all you need to do is register and submit a case study by midnight on the 31st of October. By the 12th of November we will have shortlisted 6 entries who will be invited to present at the Turning the World Upside Down Mental Health Award Event on the 27th of November.

Entries will be continually displayed and showcased mentalhealth throughout the competition.

The challenge is open to all: patients, health workers, researchers, policy makers, managers. It doesn’t matter what you’re background is, as long as you have an idea to share. Please spread this challenge far and wide; with friends, colleagues and across your networks. We want to reach anyone who could help in making mental health better worldwide.

What are we aiming to achieve?

We hope this challenge will stimulate a huge range of entries to showcase the incredible work going on to improve mental health around the world. By sharing and celebrating case studies, we can aid the global adoption and upscaling of positive practices and ideas.

The challenge underscores the equal footing and common ground that needs to be purposefully pursued in the development of global approaches to mental health.

What are we looking for?

We’re looking for entries that highlight projects, practices and ideas from all sectors and professional groups. We believe that good city-planning is just as essential to mental health as emergency psychiatric care, and we hope that your entries reflect this. Here are a few questions that show the scope of entries that we will accept:

How can we leverage social and community networks? How can we better integrate mental health into wider health and social goals? How can online technology and mobile networks be utilised to improve mental health and manage care? How can we better involve patients in decision-making? What are the possibile benefits of public-private partnerships? Can we better share tasks between health professionals to integrate and expand care?

We want you to provide the answers to these questions and more, by sharing your experience, your work and your ideas.

We hope your answers will stimulate a much-needed rethink on strategies and practices for mental health around the world.

The Platform

Turning the World Upside Down is designed to identify, promote and celebrate learning and ideas relevant to health from people living and working in low and middle income countries. At the core of the platform is the belief that knowledge transfer and innovation is two way. It is particularly focused on what high income countries can learn from low and middle income countries.

The site is an open and inclusive online platform, where anyone can share and contribute their experiences, ideas and insights by submitting a case study, writing a commentary on those already there, or commenting on and sharing individual case studies.

The case studies are examples where people have developed new ideas or new skills or are using old insights and practices which could be – or have been – transferred to other countries. The case studies will form a reservoir of ideas and inspiration both for research and practical action.

Prominent figures in global health such as Nigel Crisp, Paul Farmer, Srinath Reddy, Sally Davies, Don Berwick, Julio Frenk, Maureen Bisognano, Francis Omaswa, Bruce Keogh and Peter Piot and more have agreed to review the case studies and publish a commentary both on individual cases and the trends they identify.